Living High on the Hog — the Feral 1%

Amid the hoopla and media frenzy surrounding these exciting “occupy” social movements the question arises — how feral is the top 1%? How is it that the hyper-wealthy Americans have gotten so very much richer since 1970, and no one in our social democracy has protested until now, in the jobless aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008? A deeper question is why did it take so long for this “American Spring” movement to launch itself?

A dictionary definition of feral reads “having reverted to the wild state, as from domestication”. I would liken the term “wild state” to a libertarian economist’s dreamy vision of an early “classic” capitalist economy with almost no taxes, no financial regulations, and paltry government services. The libertarian ideologues from the Cato Institute would accept only “the watchman state” where the government simply pays for an army, police, public transportation, and some public health.

The economics editor of the British newspaper The Guardian recently wrote that you have to go back over 80 years to find another English decade like this one when living standards failed to rise over a 10-year period. Here in America you have to go back over 50 years. He adds, “It is worth reminding ourselves at this point that those people at the very top — those complaining about the injustice of the [British] 50% tax rate — have had more than three decades of living high on the hog.”

I am reminding us that our American tax rates are far below this 50% rate about which the parastic British hyper-wealthy whine so loudly. Bush gave the American hyper-rich a massive tax cut in 2002 even while they supported his waging ruinously expensive and idiotic military adventures he conjured up out of the 9/11 tragedy. The hyper-wealthy reveled in this and their slogan might be, “all in it together — until the rich want out.”

The Gini coefficient is an international yardstick used to measure the “inequality index” in a country. As historian Tony Judt has shown in his book Ill Fares The Land, economic inequality in the USA was much less between 1945 – 1970 (meaning money poured into the middle), but began to get much worse from 1970 – 2007. Sometimes clichés make sense: the rich got richer after 1970, and the poor got much poorer and the middle class also lost buying power. In a sea of overpowering statistics of which many readers are aware, here is just one: in 2007 the top 1% of Americans earned 21% of the national income, and they owned a ginormous 35% of this country’s total wealth, figures far higher than in 1970.

Given this startling and growing wealth inequality between Americans, the hyper-wealthy class’s categorical refusal to accept any tax increase has caused the outrage leading to the burgeoning “occupy” movement. The plutocratic Republicans in the House and Senate, who simply serve as bought mouthpieces for the hyper-wealthy, have already won their campaign to stop the Joint Congressional Deficit Reduction Committee from making any formulations involving revenue increases (taxes). It is well-known that almost all of our Congressional representatives belong to the elite 1%, and that concealed crony capitalism serves this elite (think Abramoff).

We need the special “Buffet” tax on the super-wealthy, a windfall-profits tax on big oil (we have done such a tax before), Obama’s jobs bill, and some kind of cap on the top end of federal entitlements. McConnell, Cantor, and the other Republican crony capitalists working for the feral rich will honor their unholy “no tax increase ever” pledge to a private individual, Grover Norquist, over their sacrosanct loyalty oath to the U.S. Constitution and the prosperity of American working people. The poverty level in the USA has risen to 15.1% — neither wealth nor jobs have been “trickling down” to the majority.

Of course our economy requires banks, but in effect the banks have socialized risk but privatized profits, and they refuse to pay higher taxes on their profits as they reward themselves with sickening bonuses. The conservative former editor of UK’s The Daily Telegraph (Charles Moore) wrote honestly that, “It turns out — as the left always claims — that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few.” While Karl Marx’s predictions about the future were way off, his analysis of mid-19^th century capitalism with its horrendous abuses was spot on: without social legislation benefiting the majority of citizens and protecting them from the hyper wealthy the gap between rich and poor, and hyper rich and the middle class, will widen dramatically (this is what the Gini coefficient shows).

Many of the hyper wealthy, the 1%, are indeed ‘feral’ because they want to revert to unfettered “wild” capitalism of the 19^th century. They enjoy flaunting their insanely increasing wealth — just look to the profligate existence of Frank McCourt, the bankrupt owner of the L.A. Dodgers who has siphoned off over $189 million for his sybaritic lifestyle (since 2004). The hyper wealthy 1% truly are un-American because they do not accept restoration of their original 39% tax rates of 2001, AND they refuse to pay up for imperialistic wars they supported that have failed. The restoration alone, which is NOT a tax increase, would help alleviate the national debt, along with a wealth tax that should extend down to the $400,000 range (not Obama’s too-high one million dollars). Of course, some reduction in Medicare costs is inevitable.

It may be that the major question facing middle-class voters is whether they trust Wall Street OR the government to provide jobs and reduce wealth inequalities. In 1912 that great Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, when the hyper-wealthy truly loved their country, stated the goal of his new “Progressive Party” this way: “to destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the day.”

One hundred years later, the 99% realizes this task still stands before us and we now begin to confront the feral 1% and their libertarian ideologues on the streets.

The feral hyper-wealthy Americans

After three September 2011 weeks in Europe, reveling in the relative openness of the liberal press here, which has refused to wallow in the homeland’s over-the-top 9/11 frenzy, gives a traveling American a much different perspective on the economic messes in Europe and especially in the USA homeland itself.

A September 10^th Guardian column re-quotes the conservative former editor of The Daily Telegraph (Charles Moore) who writes honestly that, “It turns out — as the left always claims — that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few.”

Another Guardian writer, economics editor Larry Elliott, wrote on Sept. 13^ththat you have to go back over 80 years to find another English decade like this one when living standards failed to rise over a 10-year period. Elliott adds, “It is worth reminding ourselves at this point that those people at the very top — those complaining about the injustice of the [British] 50% tax rate — have had more than three decades of living high on the hog.” Let’s remind our American selves that our tax rates are far below this 50% rate about which the parastic British hyper-wealthy whine so loudly. Bush gave the hyper-rich a massive tax cut in 2002 even while waging ruinously expensive and idiotic military adventures he hid beneath the 9/11tragedy. Economist Elliott’s revealing title: “All in it together — until the rich want out.”

A Reuters’ “Breakingviews” piece appearing in the Sept. 14 issue of the International Herald Tribune makes the point, one Americans should be thinking of amid our own financial woes, that a wealth tax for the richest 10% would “do the trick for Italy.” Hugo Dixon shows how a one-time 10% tax on the wealthiest Italians would raise 400 million euros and “cut national debt from 120% of GDP to below 100% of GDP.” Much of Italy’s crushing debt problem would be resolved, and this would significantly reverse the broader euro crisis in Europe, a looming catastrophe certain to impact the feeble US recovery. Dixon writes, “The Italians are so wealthy, they could afford it.” Some Italian hyper-wealthy, a la Warren Buffet, like this seemingly crazy idea since such a resolution of Italy’s debt problem would change the market psychology, and equity and bond prices would likely rebound. Investors losing on the wealthy tax increase could gain more on market savings than they lose on the special tax on the hyper-wealthy.

Another Sept 14 International Herald Tribune article by J. Calmes and B. Appelbaum, titled ‘Drums start to roll for stimulus,’ reviews growing support for Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill, but notes the surge is only for certain parts of his massive effort to help average and poor American workers. Whereas Congressional Republicans at first expressed openness to the jobs plan, this support, that many of us felt was politically expedient anyway, has turned sour when on Monday (9/12) the President proposed to offset the jobs bill’s short-term costs “with future tax increases on wealthy tax-payers.” This has become his important “millionaires’ tax” proposal, following the Buffett Rule.

Independent forecasters like Moody’s Analytics and Macroeconomic Advisers, quoted by Calmes and Appelbaum, assert that Congressional approval of Obama’s plan will spur US growth and get unemployment down: Moody’s believes it would add 1.9 million jobs.

However, the plutocratic Republicans in the House and Senate who simply serve as mouthpieces for the hyper-wealthy, have already begun their campaign to stop Obama’s plan. Oh, they’ll loudly vote for minor portions of the bill, but key elements, especially the special tax on the super-wealthy, including a windfall profits tax on big oil (we have done such a tax before) and closing other loopholes will pass over their foaming dead bodies. McConnell, Cantor, and the other crony capitalists working for the feral rich will honor their unholy “no tax increase ever” sacrosanct pledge to a private individual, Grover Norquist, over their loyalty oath to the U.S. Constitution and over the prosperity of American working people. The poverty level in the USA is at 15.1%, neither wealth nor jobs have been “trickling down” to the majority.

Ah, these hyper-wealthy Americans have indeed been “living high on the hog” since 1970, when the inequality between Americans began to grow tremendously (using the international yardstick, the Gini coefficient) — they vociferously supported Bush/Cheney’s insane military adventures believing they would gain access to cheap oil, but also having no intentions of paying increased taxes to fund these expensive catastrophes. They are feral, and un-American, because they do not accept restoration of their original 39% tax rates of 2001 AND they refuse to pay up for imperialistic wars that have failed. The restoration alone would help alleviate the national debt, and some reduction in Medicare costs is inevitable.

It may be that the major question facing middle-class voters is whether they trust Wall Street and business OR the government to provide jobs and reduce wealth inequalities. The rich have been getting much richer in the USA since 1970 (see Tony Judt’s Ill Fares the Land), and while the top 1% of Americans earned 21% of the national income, they owned a ginormous 35% of the country’s total wealth (for 2006-07).

That great Republican president Theodore Roosevelt stated the goal of his new “Progressive Party” this way: “to destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the day.” [1912]

The true puzzle in all this is two-fold: the supine and gutless American journalists who have failed to research and disseminate how unpatriotic our wealthy have been; and the sleepy, strategically ignorant American masses who won’t use the internet’s resources to figure this travesty out for themselves.

Let Bush Tax Cuts Expire in January!

Congress must allow the George W. Bush administration’s unfair federal tax cuts to expire this January — and let's not call the result a tax increase!

I am not a socialist. But I am a social democrat. In the 1890s a wonderful politician from Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan, three-time candidate for President, preached “the Social Gospel.” He was against too much Wall Street, too much paper wealth, and especially against the increasing concentration of the country’s growing wealth into too few hands.

I’m not “against the rich”—my concern is not simplistically focused on the rich getting lower taxes. Rather, I’m in favor of a better life for all Americans.

In Tony Judt’s seminal 2010 book, Ill Fares the Land, we read reliable graphs proving how income inequalities have grown enormously since about 1970. In 2005, 21.2 percent of U.S. national income accrued to just 1 percent of the earners. America’s “Gini coefficient” (the conventional measure of the gap separating the rich and the poor) is about that of China. While the income inequality gap was shrinking between 1870 and 1970, in the last American generation it has widened greatly, unlike in most European Union countries.

The federal government’s massive tax-cuts, set to expire this January, cannot legitimately be called tax increases as Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) and some Republicans now try to label them. It’s just not true.

Condensed, the expiring Bush tax-cuts will significantly affect the top two percent of American households — holding perhaps 40 percent of all U.S. wealth — by reverting to a 39.5 percent tax rate rather than the 36 percent rate they’ve enjoyed from 2001/2003. Remember, they paid this 39.6 percent rate before; the 39.6 percent is not new, and when restored in January it is therefore not a “tax increase.” Further, the expiration restores (does not create) the 20 percent tax rate on capital gains, and taxpayers in the top two brackets will also pay 20 percent on dividends. Finally, the estate tax on inherited wealth imposes a 45 percent tax of inheritances above $7 million for couples.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, among others, favor an inheritance tax. Getting $3.5 million from your mom or dad seems plenty generous to most of us middle-income Americans who will not be getting over $500,000 from our long-living parents, god bless them.

If any of these amazingly wealthy two percent of citizens supported either of our crazed military adventures in Iraq or Afghanistan, or enhanced their paper fortunes by profiting from the recent financial bubble, they might be pleased to be able to make up for their lack of judgment by ruefully paying more to the government beginning in January. How can plutocratic Republicans support two losing and insanely expensive foreign wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), and a very expensive prescription drug benefit given to older Americans on Medicare, yet moan about the extension of the recent jobless benefits bill? Their math doesn’t compute at all.

As others have pointed out, the deeper question that begs to be asked is: “Who counts as rich?” There’s an entire group out there, whom James Surowiecki calls “the lower upper class,” who have fallen short of the to one-to-two percent of earners.

In order to be consistent, let’s look at the expiration of tax cuts for the “middle class,” realizing it’s a slippery label at best. A July 25 New York Times financial analysis did not go into the additional money the middle class would have to pay if their tax cuts expire — but it could amount to as much as $1.6 trillion over several years. Since this issue is so political, what with the November Congressional elections looming, conventional wisdom holds that neither party would dare eliminate this “middle class” tax cut.

But the press should examine this complicated issue, because the explosion in wealth at the top of the pyramid (particularly in the very top one tenth of the top one percent) has meant many doctors, lawyers, accountants, and investors making more than $150,000 a year (or $200,000 per household ) do not feel “rich,” and desperately want to retain their lower tax rate. Yet I favor ending my own “middle class” economic group’s tax-breaks in January, along with those of the wealthier tax brackets. Its part of the Social Gospel that those of us actively working should contribute to the welfare of others — the elderly, the disabled and ill, the poor, and the homeless.

Without the restored revenues from all the expiring tax cuts, our federal government, which we expect to do so much, will lose around $3 trillion ($3,000,000,000) over the next decade. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a Wall Street insider if there ever was one, said last month that the expiration of the tax-cuts would not harm the economic recovery. Recent Nobel Prize winner in economics Paul Krugman agrees. Yet all we hear from conservatives is, “Don’t raise my taxes!” (See: Tea Party.) We have to ask: Where is the gratitude from the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans for their nine years of fabulous tax cuts, given out in 2001 and 2003 during the financial bubble? It’s like the political leaders of the city of Bell [LA] paying themselves outlandish salaries.

Digital Maoism -- A Review

Digital Maoism — a review of Lanier's You Are Not A Gadget

In his book You Are Not a Gadget, a collection of columns previously published online, digital pioneer Jaron Lanier considers how “cybernetic totalism” destroys creativity on the web, while the anonymous character of online trolls limits true debate.

Lanier is an Internet pioneer, credited with coining the term “virtual reality.” He’s also been a leader in developing the software for immersive virtual reality applications. This former net enthusiast now inveighs against a variety of digital phenomena: from the now-standard, locked-in web designs that he derides as Web 2.0, to belief in “the Singularity,” which is the notion that computer intelligence and competence—their fitness to lead—will at some point surpass that of humans.

Lanier notes that Google co-founder Larry Page is not alone among the cloud lords in believing the Internet will literally come alive. Others think this may have already happened: The “blogosphere” is a living cosmos in the minds of some. Students of world religions will resonate with Lanier’s comparison of the techies’ “faith” in the Singularity, and orthodox Religion. Or Maoism, for that matter.

We once had an IT guy at my school who enthusiastically touted our 21st century students as digital natives compared to veteran teachers who were digital barbarians. But Lanier argues that the once-beautiful digital dream of intense, creative individuality has been suffocated by the conformity-creating “hive mind.”

It is fair to say that Lanier, who calls his book a “manifesto,” has humanistic concerns about the diminishing sense of hope and promise in the vision of an international community instantly linked together. He talks about how the individual human participants in the web end up as “peasants” working for the “lords” of technology—Google, Yahoo, and hedge-fund managers with vast analytic resources. Lanier has the courage to show how the cloud lords profit from our volunteer labor; how we’re letting our kids become liquid-crystal serfs. Yes, a young person may have hundreds of “friends,” but practically all of them are on Facebook. When a web design is so locked-in that an actual human’s definition of friend gets deeply altered, Lanier writes, the “idea of friendship is reduced.”

Lanier is surely onto something when he states that a culture of sadism has gone mainstream online. He refers to the nasty edit wars on Wikipedia as well as on Slashdot, both of which accept pseudonymous comments, as “drive-by anonymity.” When my own on-line feature article appeared in the Santa Barbara Independent’s Voices column under the title “Open Carry at Starbucks [July 1, 2010]” it quickly developed a fascinating, long tail of corrosive digital comments—soon numbering 100—signed with pseudonyms. After reading Lanier’s fine book, I realize that it shouldn’t have surprised me how few of the writers really took up the question I raised, which was: Should people be able to swagger around Montecito Starbucks openly displaying handguns, even if they are unloaded?

No one picked up on my quotation from the Constitution’s famous Second Amendment, which involves Americans’ notorious gun rights; and no one directly addressed my question asking if “Arms” meant long weapons of the 1791 type or today’s extremely powerful handguns like Glocks? (I had written, “The Second Amendment to our great United States Constitution, in order to ensure ‘the security of a free State,’ guarantees citizens the right ‘to keep and bear Arms.’”) Dominating the long thread were commenters with such names as Major, Jarhead, gravedigger, and Edukder, using terms like “Eurotrash,” “snot-nosed journalist,” or “this coward who is so against guns.” (That last epithet was bravely signed by Against Cowardly Writing.)

Readers who need further proof of the nastiness of on-line anonymous commenting need look no further than the response to Matt Kettmann’s cover article A Mosque Grows in Goleta. Or the long tails of amazingly nasty meta-comments during the endless healthcare debate.

I believe Lanier’s book should be carefully read and its warnings heeded. In 21st century America I see a digital flattening and reduction of the self. After 36 years of teaching, I am deeply concerned that our kids are far too wired-up, far too “electronified.” They sit in front of various screens too many hours per week, prefer sitting to running. They need to get out more. Back to outdoor sports and active, experiential learning. Back to dinner at home with the family. Back to nature!

Lanier’s book gives us an insider’s critique of Internet technologies today. He’s a humanist in Silicon Valley drag, an apostate from the Singularity, a cybernetic Jeremiah warning us against where we’re going. All that being said, Lanier mentions three potential solutions in Chapter 8—read the book to find out what they are—and still feels the Internet holds genuine promise for humanity and for the planet. Let us hope so.

John McCain and U.S. foreign policy

Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has been highly rated in the vital areas of national defense and security for Americans, higher than either of his two Democratic rivals for the White House. Since our president serves as “commander in chief” of the armed forces, he or she wields incredible power in the world, so the foreign policy questions are crucial for America as well as the entire globe.
With deep respect for the Senator’s prior military service for this country, his inspiring survival story, we must consider that neither flying combat aircraft over Hanoi nor suffering five years’ captivity in an enemy prison necessarily make the sufferer wise on defense. The nuclear-powered carrier USS Reagan’s recent port call in Santa Barbara reminds us that the young Navy pilot John McCain took off from such a lethal offensive weapon before he was shot down. Like his Admiral father, Sen. McCain is very accustomed to projecting US power far overseas.
Despite his military record, Sen. McCain’s published foreign policy views reflect a continuation of our current President’s inept global strategy. McCain simply continues George Bush’s rash belligerence abroad. Consummate true believer, he’ll stay there as long as it takes to “win.”
McCain feels we have failed in Iraq ONLY because we didn’t go all out in the first place when we invaded Iraq. But the good Senator forgets “shock and awe” in March and April 2003, and the later battle of Fallouja — this was our battle of Algiers. He trumpets his early support of Bush’s “surge” believing these reinforcements have turned the tide there. Recent reports indicate this is not the case, and the surge has also been reduced by British and Australian pull-outs. Now we’re stuck in the fifth year of an unsavory, bloody occupation.
Sen. McCain won’t consider the competing geo-political idea that the next president could choose NOT to go harder in Iraq — we could pull out of the Mesopotamian mud by the end of 2009. McCain falls into more of the deadly Cheney-Bush illogical thinking when he stresses how the sacrifices of our 4000 war dead mean we have to stay. We can expect waves of surges for the next hundred years from the Arizona Senator.
Withdrawal from Iraq by late ’09 dishonors only the executive branch incompetents who thoughtlessly hurled our men there; while a judicious withdrawal will restore some of our moral stature around the world and give our armies time to heal. Pulling out of Iraq does NOT require leaving the entire Middle East nor does it have to feel like a defeat. Often we have two stupendous nuclear carriers cruising off the Strait of Hormuz guarding oil lanes (intimidating Iran?), or even three, and friendly Israel is a staunch military ally.
What does “win in Iraq” really mean to the Cheney-Bush-McCain troika and their followers? The neo-cons chose to disband Saddam Hussein’s army, but then banned these Sunni Baathists from participation in the political process of the “new” Iraqi government. John McCain did not protest this. After finally getting rid of Saddam Hussein, Bush suddenly said America next had to “install democracy” in Iraq. John McCain did not protest this policy.
Today we can ask, ‘how do you force a democratic government down the throats of traditionally competitive Arab desert tribes?’ Today, the new democratically-elected Iraqi leaders openly thumb their noses at us by lavishly welcoming the crazy Iranian President into Baghdad, while the past few days witness mortar attacks on our Green Zone redoubt. Can Sen. McCain see that our true contest is in the global war on terror (GWOT), not these posturing puppets on the Euphrates? Our enemy is NOT a country. Our enemy uses the internet and cell phones and text messages to communicate, and he hides openly among us all across the globe. McCain’s sadly simplistic to contend that “winning” in Iraq equates to victory in the GWOT against the West.
To continue trying to “win” in Iraq sustains an incredible strain on the US economy, already reeling for other reasons. This three trillion dollar war has to stop not only because of the unbearable cost of American and Iraqi lives, but also because we are borrowing the war-funding from our own children. Twelve billion dollars a month is too much. The current Iraqi occupation is unsupportable financially and inexcusable morally.
In every US war we’ve ever had, we have had to raise taxes in order to pay for it. This is logical, and usually the government has also borrowed vast sums of money from the banks and the people. The Cheney-Bush crowd, however, not only CUT TAXES for the very wealthy, those most able to pay, but they also failed to ask sacrifices from the American people. We gave up tax revenues for the government while waging an unbelievably expensive war, yet asked for no sacrifices from the people! If they really believed this attack on one country would win the GWOT they’d demand parallel sacrifices from “the people” — how about gasoline rationing like W.W. II?
Sen. McCain would prolong our unsuccessful Iraqi occupation, and send more of our increasingly exhausted army there to fight. He’s such the Bush foreign policy clone that he’s incapable of cognizing the COSTS of our occupation debâcle. He also seems to have no ideas about how to pay for the NEXT three trillion dollars of expenses, and he doesn’t dare demand sacrifice from the people to help the war. Sen. McCain has also spoken recklessly about Iranian impudence and nuclear intransigence, and recently kept saying “Iran” when context demanded “Iraq.” These are not senior moments, and many think a President McCain would countenance invasion of Iran.
With no new foreign policy ideas on how to wage the GWOT, or pull-out plans for Iraq, Senator McCain should remain in the U.S. Senate dispensing his wisdom as an elder statesman. America will be much stronger if we elect a leader who will extract our men from Iraq as expeditiously as possible, certainly by December 2009 as Barack Obama has promised.

Open Letter to US Rep. Lois Capps (D Calif):

Considering your status as a “super delegate” to the Democratic Nominating Convention, and given your strong stand against our continued occupation of Iraq, I hope you will speak out stridently against the McCain-Bush-Petraeus strategy to keep the “surge” reinforcements in Iraq longer.
Maintaining current troop levels, i.e. NOT bringing the 30,000+ surge soldiers back as promised, damages American interests and uses up our soldiers. The US armed forces, especially the infantry and the armored battalions, need to regroup and heal themselves. We have to replace thousands of Humvees and many Apache gunships, etc. And asking our young warriors to go for third tours while the leadership has no overall reasonable goals in Iraq — this is wrong. This is criminally inept. The intolerable costs of this misguided mistake, almost $12 billion a month, bankrupt the nation. Our national economy may be our strongest defense.
We need to get out of Iraq and much of the Middle East (not Afghanistan), so I urge you, Mrs. Capps, to haggle with both the Obama and the Clinton campaigns to push them into harder anti-war stances. The stated goal of mostly withdrawn by Dec. 2009 is too far off — how about pledges to have 90% of American forces out of Iraq by August 2009, with the last 10% out by year’s end? Both Democratic candidates need to stop hedging about leaving “a few troops” within Iraq; please use your super delegate status to press our candidates to publicly call for withdrawal from Iraq NOW!

John McCain and U.S. Foreign Policy

Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has been highly rated in the vital areas of national defense and security for Americans, higher than either of his two Democratic rivals for the White House. Since our president serves as “commander in chief” of the armed forces, he or she wields incredible power in the world, so the foreign policy questions are crucial for America as well as the entire globe.
With deep respect for the Senator’s prior military service for this country, his inspiring survival story, we must consider that neither flying combat aircraft over Hanoi nor suffering five years’ captivity in an enemy prison necessarily make the sufferer wise on defense.
Despite his military record, Sen. McCain’s published foreign policy views reflect a continuation of our current President’s inept global strategy. McCain simply continues George Bush’s rash belligerence abroad. Consummate true believer, he’ll stay there as long as it takes to “win.”
McCain feels we have failed in Iraq ONLY because we didn’t go all out in the first place when we invaded Iraq. But the good Senator forgets “shock and awe” in March and April 2003, and the later battle of Fallouja — this was our battle of Algiers. He trumpets his early support of Bush’s “surge” believing these reinforcements have turned the tide there. Recent reports indicate this is not the case, and the surge has also been reduced by British and Australian pull-outs. Now we’re stuck in the fifth year of an unsavory, bloody occupation.
Sen. McCain won’t consider the competing geo-political idea that the next president could choose NOT to go harder in Iraq — we could pull out of the Mesopotamian mud by the end of 2009. McCain falls into more of the deadly Cheney-Bush illogical thinking when he stresses how the sacrifices of our 4000 war dead mean we have to stay. We can expect waves of surges for the next hundred years from the Arizona Senator.
Withdrawal from Iraq by late ’09 dishonors only the executive branch incompetents who thoughtlessly hurled our men there; while a judicious withdrawal will restore some of our moral stature around the world and give our armies time to heal. Pulling out of Iraq does NOT require leaving the entire Middle East nor does it have to feel like a defeat. Often we have two stupendous nuclear carriers cruising off the Strait of Hormuz guarding oil lanes (intimidating Iran?), or even three, and friendly Israel is a staunch military ally.
What does “win in Iraq” really mean to the Cheney-Bush-McCain troika and their followers? The neo-cons chose to disband Saddam Hussein’s army, but then banned these Sunni Baathists from participation in the political process of the “new” Iraqi government. John McCain did not protest this. After finally getting rid of Saddam Hussein, Bush suddenly said America next had to “install democracy” in Iraq. John McCain did not protest this policy.
Today we can ask, ‘how do you force a democratic government down the throats of traditionally competitive Arab desert tribes?’ Today, the new democratically-elected Iraqi leaders openly thumb their noses at us by lavishly welcoming the crazy Iranian President into Baghdad, while the past few days witness mortar attacks on our Green Zone redoubt. Can Sen. McCain see that our true contest is in the global war on terror (GWOT), not these posturing puppets on the Euphrates? Our enemy is NOT a country. Our enemy uses the internet and cell phones and text messages to communicate, and he hides openly among us all across the globe. McCain’s sadly simplistic to contend that “winning” in Iraq equates to victory in the GWOT against the West.
To continue trying to “win” in Iraq sustains an incredible strain on the US economy, already reeling for other reasons. This Three Trillion Dollar War has to stop not only because of the unbearable cost of American and Iraqi lives, but also because we are borrowing the war-funding from our own children. Twelve billion dollars a month is too much. The current Iraqi occupation is unsupportable financially and inexcusable morally.
In every US war we’ve ever had, we have had to raise taxes in order to pay for it. This is logical, and usually the government has also borrowed vast sums of money from the banks and the people. The Cheney-Bush crowd, however, not only CUT TAXES for the very wealthy, those most able to pay, but they also failed to ask sacrifices from the American people. We gave up tax revenues for the government while waging an unbelievably expensive war, yet asked for no sacrifices from the people! If they really believed this attack on one country would win the GWOT they’d demand parallel sacrifices from “the people” — how about gasoline rationing like W.W. II?
Sen. McCain would prolong our unsuccessful Iraqi occupation, and send more of our increasingly exhausted army there to fight. He’s such the Bush foreign policy clone that he’s incapable of cognizing the costs of our occupation debâcle. He also seems to have no ideas about how to pay for the next three trillion dollars of expenses, and he doesn’t dare demand sacrifice from the people to help the war. Sen. McCain has also spoken recklessly about Iranian impudence and nuclear intransigence, and recently kept saying “Iran” when context demanded “Iraq.” These are not senior moments, and many think a President McCain would countenance invasion of Iran.
With no new foreign policy ideas on how to wage the GWOT,or pull-out plans for Iraq, Senator McCain should remain in the U.S. Senate dispensing his wisdom as an elder statesman. America will be much stronger if we elect a leader who will extract our men from Iraq as expeditiously as possible, certainly by December 2009.